


this dark world is precious to me

by nextgreatadventure



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Masturbation, Murder, Post 2x08, Violence, brief non con in a dream situation, i think......that covers it, obsessive women who want to kill and screw each other, sex with stand-ins, weird supernatural connections
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 07:36:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19058152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nextgreatadventure/pseuds/nextgreatadventure
Summary: Eve dreams of so many things after Rome.





	this dark world is precious to me

\---  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Eve dreams of so many things after Rome. Fevered things, violent things. Things from her past, people, insecurities she hasn’t let invade her in years. New things, too: power and control and deep, endless voids. She dreams her spine is made of pure steel, and she wakes believing it.

After her wound begins to heal, she and Niko have sex one last time up against the dresser in the bedroom that was once both of theirs, and then he leaves again into the night, doors slamming, tears in his eyes. Eve falls into bed exhausted and upset and sad and confused, still half horny and jittery, skin slick with sweat and prickling with electricity, like there’s a storm coming and she’s had too much coffee and not nearly enough sleep. She is so desperate for something familiar that she nearly runs right out after him, but it turns out she’s too tired to move, or to care. She just wants to rest, she wants to scrub her brain free of intrusions, she wants to unwind her skin and muscle away from her bones like thread on a spool until there’s absolutely nothing left.

That night, Eve’s subconscious shows her this: Villanelle’s long hands sliding slowly, tenderly, down her throat, and then her breasts, her ribs, the soft dip below her belly button...

—and Eve is not ready. The pulse of want beating within her alongside her heartbeat is thunderous and her thighs are sticky with how wet she is, how wet she’s been for so long, but she can’t, she fucking cannot let Villanelle’s hands anywhere near her. The repulsion is like an itch, like a reflex, and she’s so upset in this dream that she’s nearly growling, crying with frustrated exertion. She tries to shove and tug and force herself away but it makes no difference, she beats at Villanelle’s chest with her fists and she tries to pry Villanelle’s fingers from her skin with her nails but all it does is let Villanelle closer to her, further in, like each move Eve makes to escape frees up just enough space between them for Villanelle to sink herself inside it, like quicksand, like a vine. Like a deep, unrelenting embrace.

And Eve is _not ready_ , she doesn’t _want_ this, she does not want it _at all_ , she’d rather vomit up her lungs or claw her eyes out and stomp on them or grind them up in her nonexistent garbage disposal, but then—

Something snaps, very abruptly, like a bone cleanly in half. Something ignites inside of her in the dark of wherever this is, whatever this is, and maybe—

Maybe she _does_ want it, after all. Maybe she wants it more than she’s ever wanted anything in her entire life, maybe she wants it so badly that she’d crawl on her hands and knees through a desert and beg and steal for it, maybe she’s fucking ravenous for it, maybe she’ll die if she doesn’t get it. Maybe she’d murder a dozen more men just to keep this moment within her grasp a little while longer. When she grabs like a vice onto Villanelle’s arm it feels exactly like her two fists on the smooth handle of an axe, and when Villanelle’s hands finally, finally drift lower and curl firmly, possessively, around that thrumming pulse between Eve’s legs, blood gushes in a flood over both their hands, warm and slick and glittering.

When Eve wakes, she’s trembling, writhing in her sheets, and the raw pink seam in her back has split open again across her stitches. She lies there panting, unable to discern whether the orgasm was in her mind or in her body, and decides that the blood leaking against the mattress and the sharp, loose stinging beside her spine can wait. In a fever dream, she rolls over and slides her palms between her legs and presses her thighs together, over and over again, as Niko’s face shifts into Raymond’s face shifts into Villanelle’s, and Villanelle’s, and Villanelle’s—

 

(When Eve told Villanelle that she would sleep a lot better without her, she wasn't lying.)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Villanelle finds a bar and takes home the first curly haired brunette she sees. In Naples, in Palermo, in Malta, working her way south, the same, the same, the same. She is so furious and bored, feral and detached. She is filled to bursting with absolutely nothing.

She makes these women get on their knees in front of her. She makes them avert their eyes when she comes, but it’s never enough, always too weak, barely even a spark before it fizzles out. Too much like a paper cut instead of the knife wound she craves, because she won’t think of Eve. She doesn’t undress. She undresses them though, these strange women, digs long red lines into their thighs, into their arched backs, fucks them with her hands until she can’t look at them anymore and switches to her mouth instead, unable to be satiated at all either way. A sob she doesn’t know if she means or even understands tears itself like a trap from her chest every single time, and every time she runs her hands through the wild dark hair of whatever body is in front of her and she does not think of Eve. She will not think of Eve and feel nothing because if she did, it would only be anger, like always, except it would be explosive this time, it would be a biblical kind of wrath, a fucking tantrum with a body count, and even though it would feel so _amazing_ , she can’t bring herself to kill any of these women. That would be rude. That would be a concession.

It has nothing to do with the way the women’s faces always change for her, even if just for a moment, haloed with a familiar chaos of dark, dark hair.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Eve’s dreams begin to bleed into her waking moments, become fantasies. She doesn’t even dream about axe murders anymore. Instead, she fantasizes about wrapping her fingers around Villanelle’s throat until the crescents of her fingernails make the skin bleed, imagines taking that pearl handled knife she dumped at the airport and slicing it upward from the scar she already made, taking as many more inches as she can stand to rip through. 

She dreams that Villanelle fucks her slowly in front of a wide, ornate mirror for hours, until she can’t walk, can’t see can’t breathe can’t think, until she can’t tell where she ends and Villanelle begins (has she ever been able to tell?). She dreams about slamming Villanelle’s lithe, young body into the mirror until it shatters. She imagines licking the shards of glass and blood away gently, or maybe roughly, and she imagines kissing Villanelle with a mouthful of arsenic or razor blades or tongue.

It is exhausting to live this way. 

( _More exhausting than before?_ a voice in her head whispers. It is Villanelle’s. _Am I still keeping you up at night, Eve?_ )

 _I hate that you did this to me_ , she will think back. 

_The same to you, Eve._ )  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Eve still comes into Villanelle’s head sometimes, unbidden, while she’s trying to do other, more important things. 

_Do you regret it?_ Eve will ask. _Do you even know what that means?_

And Villanelle will shrug as she pulls another trigger, or stabs another blade, or chokes someone out with a long silver wire.

_I bet I can explain it in a way someone like you can understand. Let’s see. You know that hot, heavy feeling you get whenever you realize that you’ll never know what it’s like to feel my lips trail down your throat?_

Villanelle will falter, blink furiously, and depending on how murdered they are so far, the person in front of her might hope she’s hesitating. Having second thoughts.

_You’ll never get to kiss me, now, because you fucked it right up. Your one chance, and you blew it. Do you really think I’ll ever forgive you, now? Really? How does that make you feel, Villanelle? You’ll never get to feel my arms around you, never run your hands through my hair in the morning, messy from a night of sleeping beside you. You’ve dreamt about that so many times, haven’t you? You’ll never know what it sounds like when I sigh against you and beg for more of your touch, or when I breathe out your name, your real name, and then tell you to come against my palm like a good girl. These are all the things you wanted so desperately, aren’t they?_

It is usually around this time that Villanelle will get a little sloppy. She’ll make more of a mess than she needs to.

 _You’re getting sloppy_ , the Eve in her head will note.

“Shut _up_ ,” Villanelle will snap. Out loud? She doesn’t know. The person in front of her might be confused, think she’s crazy.

_Are you angry? Really? Because I think it might be regret. I think I may have finally made you feel it. I think maybe I’m the only one who ever will._

“Make some noise!” Villanelle will shout suddenly. “Do something! Aren’t you scared to die? Why don’t you beg for your life?” And the person in front of her might or might not distract her for a few more minutes with sobs or pleas or bargains or appeals to her humanity. 

At least it shuts Eve up momentarily.  
  
  
But then later:

 _Nothing will ever be enough to fill you up again. Nobody else will make you feel anything, not now. You know this. So why are you still trying? Why are you still pretending?_

Villanelle doesn’t know anything _but_ pretending. Eve knows that. It is cruel that Eve always speaks to her in the one language she cannot understand.

“You left!” Villanelle will scream over the warm dead body on the ground, or in the chair, or slumped against the wall in front of her. Her cheeks are always wet but she doesn’t know why. “You did not want me, you wanted only yourself!”

_Oh, baby. Do you really still think that was the problem?_

Villanelle will slump against the wall, too, and either she will feel everything, or she will feel nothing. 

_You still don’t understand, do you?_

“I want to,” Oksana’s voice is small, but Eve has already gone. “I want to so badly.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Eve takes her chances, apologizes even though she doesn’t really mean it (they both know it) and goes back to Carolyn. 

“Circumstances have become rather...elevated, since last we spoke,” Carolyn informs her as she tips the steaming pot over their porcelain cups, typically clipped, vague, and mysterious. “I suggest you buy a gun. Lemon?”  
  
  
So Carolyn gives Eve a stack of cash and she buys a gun. On impulse, she buys a knife, too, later at some estate sale she’s sent to to make good on a contact. Eve spends a lot of money on it. She keeps it in her purse. The blade is a little rusty but the handle is sky blue with flecks of ruby red and it reminds her of everything she needs not to forget, now.

Sometimes, Eve sleeps alone in her bed with the gun against her bare chest, more for the comforting cold weight than anything else. Sometimes she cradles it like she would a lover, close to the soft part of her belly with loving, lingering hands.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_A bullet in the back, really, you asshole? At least I stabbed you to your face._

“Mm, let me make it up to you,” Villanelle purrs. She’s still half asleep. If she stays here, in that in-between space a little longer, she can pretend that Eve is beside her without having to snap back into her new, furious, dull reality. Without needing to go out and kill someone, or fuck them, or both.

Villanelle’s back arches against the mattress while she touches herself, languidly, obscenely, in this hotel room somewhere far north of Moscow, and she gasps, moans low right out into the empty darkness. 

“I miss you,” she whines, because no one but Oksana can hear. 

_So why did you do it?_

 _Do you even know what that means?_

Instead of answering, Villanelle shudders pleasurably against her hand for so long that she loses her train of thought, and slips quietly back to sleep.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Eve wasn’t lying when she told Villanelle she wasn’t afraid of anything anymore.

Though she barely knows what she’s doing even as she does it, Eve goes out late one night, after work, to a very nice bar. She picks out a redhead who won’t make eye contact with her until she walks right up, runs her fingers down the woman’s arm and asks explicitly to buy her a drink. 

_Do you even know what you’re doing?_ Villanelle’s voice asks hotly, incredulously, as Eve’s door bangs wide open and she stumbles inside, the woman she chose hanging desperately from her shoulders like a sheet in the wind.

 

Later, in bed, when Eve wraps both her hands around the woman's neck (she never asked for a name), the woman’s eyes go wide with panic. She doesn’t like it. Eve backs off immediately.

 _Oh, baby,_ Villanelle whispers. _It takes awhile to learn to pick out the right ones._  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
There’s a young woman with long hair the color of honey at the reception desk of the MI6 shooting range Eve frequents who keeps looking Eve up and down, up and down, every time she comes in. The blonde’s lingering smile is softly coy, feels like an invitation. Like they already share a secret. Eve feels something like intuition, a small flash of recognition, deep in her gut, but she waits this time. (Maybe it means that she’s learning.)

Eve squints at this woman, half her age, through the small window that separates the reception area from the shooting range, eyes narrowed behind yellow safety glasses. Her ears are covered with noise cancelling muffs and maybe that’s why she can hear Villanelle’s voice even clearer, this time. 

_What are you doing, Eve?_

Eve glances back to the target. Her trigger finger pulls four times in quick succession, a series of blunted echoing bangs, a bull’s eye, a bull’s eye, an _almost_ bull’s eye, and a definite miss — but that’s probably because suddenly Eve is thinking about how the young receptionist’s tongue would feel licking around her fingers instead of the cold, hard metal.  
  
  
Eve finds out soon enough. She goes to leave after her session and is stopped by the young woman’s hand on her arm, her cell number scribbled discreetly against Eve’s outturned palm.  
  
Two nights later, the receptionist’s blonde hair is twisted hard around Eve’s fist and she is begging, naked, beneath Eve’s body, begging for—Eve doesn’t even know what. The words are all incoherent. But Eve knows that she likes it, the sounds, the context, the feeling. It feels good not to hold back for once.

When Eve slides her index and middle finger experimentally down the woman’s warm, wet center, she knows that eventually, when she pushes them inside and curls, it will feel just like pulling the trigger to a perfect bull’s eye.

 _What are you doing, Eve?_ Villanelle asks again, always hiding in the shadows of her mind, watching.

 _Practicing,_ Eve thinks. _For you._

 _Mmm,_ Villanelle hums, delighted and jealous. Eve decides it’s time, and the resulting quick, hot gasp in her ear sounds exactly like a gunshot. _Can’t wait._  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading and thanks to pieheda for reading first. speaking of, this is my first foray into these wild ladies...be gentle *prayer hands emoji*  
> title from the incomparable sleater kinney.


End file.
